U.N.:
Mercenary Industry Poses Problems For Latin America
By Cyril Mychalejko
27 April, 2007
Countercurrents.org
The United Nations quietly released
a report in March exposing an array of human rights abuses associated
with a growing mercenary industry that is recruiting large numbers from
Latin American countries.
"We have observed that
in some cases the employees of private military and security companies
enjoy an immunity which can easily become impunity, implying that some
States may contract these companies in order to avoid direct legal responsibilities,"
said Jose Luis Gomez del Prado, Chairperson-Rapporteur of the U.N. Working
Group on the Use of Mercenaries in a statement before the Human Rights
Council.
The alleged human rights
abuses are not just against civilians from the countries in which they
operate, but also against there own employees. These "soldiers
of misfortune" are often recruited from vulnerable populations
in developing countries, such as Honduras and Ecuador, countries the
U.N. group visited last year to conduct investigations. The massive
unemployment, low wages, fragile governments and the history of violent
conflicts in these countries make their populations an ideal labor pool.
In addition, the report expresses worry about the "phenomenon"
of Latin American government outsourcing domestic security and military
functions to the private sector and the use of such operations to "protect"
oil and mining companies.
"There needs to be international
regulations as well as domestic regulations in these countries,"
said Sanho Tree, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Tree, who has been monitoring
this"out of control" industry for years in its role in the
"War on Drugs" in Latin America, said that the lack of regulations
and oversight is due to the fact that that it's been under the radar
for years and just coming to light because of the Iraq War. It's estimated
that there may be as many as 50,000 mercenaries working in Iraq—making
it the second largest force in the so-called "coalition of the
willing." Many of them may end up fighting alongside U.S. soldiers
in combat situations.
"The number of personal
security specialists we utilize in Iraq alone is more than all the Diplomatic
Security agents we have globally", said Gregg Starr, a State Department
official in testimony before Congress in June of 2006.
Although there has been some
reporting on high profile companies, the issue still may not be garnering
the attention it deserves as no media outlets have reported on the U.N.
report.
According to the Working
Group, there may be as many as 280 private security companies operating
illegally in Honduras. A number of Honduran nationals working in Iraq
for a subsidiary of the Illinois-based Your Solutions Inc., are believed
to have suffered "irregularities in contracts, harsh working conditions,
wages partially paid or unpaid, ill-treatment and isolation, and lack
of basic necessities such as medical treatment and sanitation."
Some former employees have filed labor and criminal claims against the
company with Honduran authorities.
Another scandal unearthed
against the company in the Working Group's report involves illegally
training Chilean recruits for Iraq in Honduras. The report states that
in September 2005 the company brought 105 Chileans, some ex-soldiers,
into the country under tourist visas. The Chileans, alongside their
Honduran counterparts, were then sent to a former army base in the municipality
of Lepaterique to receive training. The former base, now a development
center of the Honduras Forestry Development Corporation, was once used
by Washington in the 1980's to train mercenaries of a maybe not-so-different
sort—namely Contras, Honduras's infamous death squad Battalion
316, and Argentina's 601st Intelligence Battalion, a "counter-terrorist"
unit initiated under Operation Condor.
The possibility for industry
changes in Honduras may be slight as the Working Group pointed out a
"campaign of harassment, death threats and slander against the
[human rights organization] Associacion para una Sociedad Mas Justa
(Association for a More Just Society)." On Dec. 4, 2006 Dionisio
Díaz García, a lawyer and journalist with the Tegucigalpa-based
AJS, was shot in the head while driving in his car to court where he
was scheduled to represent a group of security guards who had their
labor rights violated.
In a statement, the AJS wrote:
"These companies have resorted to intimidation, smear campaigns,
and open hostility toward AJS workers. On Monday, December 11, a board
member and staff of CRWRC-Honduras partner group Genesis received a
text message stating, 'You are the next.'"
In Ecuador conditions are
more of the same: immunity, impunity, exploitation and human and labor
rights violations. The report expressed concern that private security
companies were using the U.S. military base in Manta to recruit employees
for foreign operations (Iraq and Afghanistan) and to conduct aerial
spraying and other counter-narcotics operations under "Plan Colombia".
"A transnational private
security company was performing counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics
tasks from the military base in Manta," said the U.N.'s Gomez del
Prado, adding that these functions should be carried out exclusively
by U.S. military personnel.
Manta has become a political
lightning rod as Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa has threatened to
not renew the "Agreement of Cooperation" with the U.S. (which
expires in 2009) that allows Washington to use the Air Force base. The
agreement also grants immunity to U.S. military personnel and civilian
contractors—a clause which the Working Group views as problematic.
The report and its documentation of abuses of the use of the base along
with public opinion firmly on the side of Correa may make it even easier
for him to kick Washington out when the agreement expires.
Jeffrey Shippey, a former
DynCorp International employee at Manta created a ghost company, Epi
Security and Investigations, and recruited more than 1,000 Colombians
and Ecuadorians to work in Iraq. The report noted that the company wasn't
registered in Quito nor with local provisional authorities. NGO's told
the Working Group that the company allegedly was using Chilean instructors
and former Colombian military personnel.
Shippey wrote in an advertisement
promoting his company at the Iraq Job Center Web Site ( www.iraqjobcenter.com)
that, "These forces have been fighting terrorists for 41 years
and…have been trained by the U.S. Navy Seals and the U.S. DEA
to conduct counter-drug/counter-terror ops in the jungles and rivers
of Colombia."
Another virtue of his mercenaries
is that they get paid considerably less than their U.S. counterparts.
In July 2005 Shippey told The Los Angeles Times, "The U.S . State
Department is very interested in saving money on security now. Because
they're driving the prices down, we're seeking Third World people to
fill the positions."
Adam Isacson, Director of
Programs at the Center for International Policy, worries about the stories
that haven't come to light yet. He mentioned a report translated on
his website ( http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/
blog/archives/000299.htm ) about Colombians working in
Iraq for a subsidiary of Blackwater USA who had their return tickets
taken away from them when they complained that they would only get paid
$1,000 a month after being promised $4,000. They were essentially held
hostage.
"It was almost slavery,"
said Isacson. "Lord knows how many more cases there are."
Tree, of the Institute for
Policy Studies, said that there are other consequences that we might
not see for years. One of the most worrying is that these people may
take this training and use it for violent criminal activities. An example
of this is the story of the "Zetas", a group of Mexican paramilitary
commandoes trained by U.S. special-forces to fight drug gangs. Many
members of this group now work for the notorious Gulf Cartel, which
is believed to supply large amounts of cocaine to the U.S.
"Don't train people
if you don't know what side they are going to fight for at the end of
the day," said Tree.
Cyril Mychalejko is an editor at www.UpsideDownWorld.org.
He can be reached at Cyril(at)upsidedownworld.org.
To read the UN Working Group on the Use of Mercenaries report: http://www.ohchr.org/english/issues/mercenaries/index.htm
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